Thoughts Media Sites

Tag: YouTube

Earlier today I needed an answer to a simple question: if you posted a YouTube link to an unlisted video on Twitter, would it embed the video properly in the feed and work exactly like a public video? Surprisingly, I couldn’t find the answer despite several searches. So I performed a quick experiment, first uploading a video of my son to my personal YouTube account and marking it as unlisted:

Then I took the YouTube link and posted it to Twitter. The video embedded in the timeline just as you’d expect:

So there you go: post your unlisted videos on Twitter and they’ll work just like you want them to.

I’ve seen a lot of stupid comments on my YouTube videos, but this one really made my day (here’s the video it was from). I know I talk fast, and that might be challenging for some, but my actual use of the language? Apparently my spoken English is so poor, this fellow from Portland, Oragon, USA, just couldn’t make out what I was saying. 😉

For all the junk on YouTube, there are some real gems – truly talented people who just want to share with the world. I admire the guts it takes to do something like this, especially knowing how harsh people can be on YouTube!

I’ve talked about how awful some of the comments on YouTube can be, but sometimes the lack-of-brains can come from the content producers…check out the screenshot above, where someone named “FierceMightOMax” went berserk with the annotation tool. Yikes!

I heard this saying once: “There’s no such thing as a stupid question, just inquisitive idiots.” Keep that in mind as you read this. Since I started doing videos on YouTube for my business Web sites two years ago, I’ve made a real effort to respond to every question I can. If someone asks a question, no matter how basic, I’d answer it. Some days I’ve spent a solid 60 minutes answering questions, typically on a Monday after a weekend of posted questions. As my videos have gotten more views (I’m up to over 1.45 million total views, 97% of those on YouTube) the rate of questions have increased. It’s not uncommon for me to answer 30 a day when I put up a new video, and people seem to really appreciate it – I’ve had many people tell me they’re amazed that I answer questions, since many people who create videos won’t do that.

There’s something I’ve noticed however: YouTube is full of “inquisitive idiots”; people who ask questions without spending even one second trying to find the answer for themselves. For every one question I get from someone who has a legitimate question that requires an answer, which I’m happy to answer, I get 30 from the inquisitive idiots – people who ask questions I’ve already answered in the video. Check out the question below that was posted earlier this week:

When I read that message in my Inbox, I swear I felt about a million neurons groan and die inside my brain. The combination of txtspk, poor grammar, and the string of questions, several of which are answered in the video, made me want to do anything BUT answer this comment. To this person’s credit, it looks like they actually went to the HP Web site and did some research – most people opt to ask me questions that they can find the answer to themselves: size, weight, price, specifications, etc. I often have all that information in the sidebar of the video, but most people don’t look at that. Continue reading YouTube Comments…I Just Can’t Take it Anymore

What’s that above? A screen shot of three of the comments I posted on one of my YouTube videos this afternoon. I was responding to the comments and questions that other people have left, and I spent about 60 minutes today posting replies…only to have a tiny fraction of them actually make it live. YouTube happily lets me click the POST COMMENT button, but it never posted most of my comments. There’s nothing worse than spending time doing something, only to have all your work vanish. YouTube’s commenting system has been buggy for years, and they never seem to fix the problems with it. Worse yet, even as a YouTube partner, I can’t even talk to anyone about this issue – their partner email address now goes into a non-monitored email account with an auto-responder telling me to use a contact form that doesn’t seem to exist. Everything that Google buys turns to crap from a customer service perspective, YouTube included.